Magic Materials and the Promises of Transformation: On the Animation of Nanomedicine

• In Event: Ghosts of Modern Futures Past – II

Abstract

Magic haunts both modernity and STS. While analyses of magic were central to mid-twentieth century Anthropology, as the tools of ethnomethodology were increasingly trained toward modernity itself, critical analysis of the concept and practices were largely abandoned. This has produced a curious oversight, as concepts of the magical continue to infuse the imaginative repertoire of contemporary technoscience. Visions of the magical qualities of novel materials and the fantastical claim that new pharmaceuticals and drugs constitute ‘magic bullets’ underscores the continuing salience of magic in the constitution of contemporary technological cultures. This paper builds on a recent revival of studies of magic, arguing that magic is neither antithetical nor incidental to modernity but pivotal to its central institutions. We interrogate the concept of the ‘magic bullet’ from its inception in Paul Ehrlich’s development of ‘receptor theory’ and chemotherapy through to its ongoing use in contemporary materials research and drug development. Building on Derrida’s (1998) etymology of pharmacy, which he associates with a “spellbinding virtue” that “can be – alternately or simultaneously – beneficent or maleficent”, we argue that the language of ‘magic’ is not an incidental descriptor of the materials produced through biomedical research. Based on ongoing ethnographic research, we develop an account of the ways the concept of magic serves to animate the specificity of laboratory experimentation by paradoxically allowing ‘whiggish’ histories of cures to extend mechanistic models of illness and treatment into new terrains. We close by speculating on ways in which the magical qualities of novel materials – and the performative and ritual work that enables their enchantment – may provide a vantage point for political and normative interrogation of scientific practices.

Authors

• Declan Liam Kuch, UNSW

• Matthew Kearnes, Environmental Humanities Progarmme, School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wale